offensive and dent Thatcher's majority. The defeat of the Labour candidate at Greenwich, a Labour seat since 1945, shows not only tactical significantly, the failure of Labour to hold their votes. This poses Labour supporters with some fundamental questions. Why, after the initiative from the Tories? JANE KELLY and DAVE PACKER investigate. • atchard Indistrial Services Rollowi Guarita TO UNDERSTAND LABOUR'» present impasse we must not only look closely at Neil Kin- nock's project and the nature of 'new rea- lism', which holds sway in the upper reaches of the labour movement, but we must also look at Thatcher's ruling class offensive. Wi- thout such an analysis, it is impossible to comprehend the political situation in the 1980s, nor is it possible to develop a strategy for the working class The left has developed various analyses of Thatcher's politics. The most influential is that of Marxism Today which describes Thatcherism as 'authoritarian populism' and talks in terms of a new reactionary con- sensus. Abandoning any pretence to working class politics, which in today's conditions can only be expressed in a fight for a Labour government that is prepared to confront the
All aboard for the general election ruling class, Marxism Today opens the door to an alternative capitalist consensus — the anti-Thatcher alliance and coalition politics with the Alliance parties.
The centre-left and the Labour Coordinating Committee offer a pale version of the analysis of Marxism Today. Their näive attempt to hang onto Kinnock's coat tails to 'save him from the right has been a complete fiasco — many of their supporters have completely adapted to Kinnock's politics, so much so that former Tribune editor, Nigel Williamson is now the editor of the Labour Party News. They have failed to develop any alternative to the ideas of Marxism Today and so capitulate to them. There is a large section of the right. the Kinnockites and former Bennites who have no alternative to new realism and thus the capitalist consensus. Thatcher's strategy What are the main features of Thatcher's project? First and foremost it is a rational, it not yet a successful, capitalist policy. Early reactions to the deliberate crashing of the economy and the subsequent bankrupting of many unprofitable businesses, the creation of a large pool of unemployed, led to some false, short-term and misleading analyses of Thatcher's 'lunatic project'. These were misconceived. Anvone who thought that the most experienced bourgeoisie in the world would commit collective suicide, or use a 'lunatic' to carry out their plans are themselves suftering from severe delusions! No, it is a sane,
International No 9 March/April 1987
long term strategy of restructuring and revamping the chronically undercapitalised and backward industry of the oldest imperial power. According to this strategy, British capital has the economic reserves through its huge foreign investments and earnings, together with the revenues from North Sea oil, to be able to weather such a drastic restructuring.
The Thatcher offensive has had some considerable successes against the working class and the labour movement. The restructuring has had a major impact on the make up of the labour force. It has created over four million unemployed; it has produced 50% youth unemployment in some inner city areas; it has made 4.5 million people into part-time workers, 90 per cent of them women and few of them qualifying for employment protection or benefits; it has made more than two million people into temporary workers, again including a high proportion of women; it has increased the number of homeworkers, especially among the most vulnerable sections of the class, black and immigrant women. The vast majority of all these workers are not in trade unions.
But this is not the whole story, for while this low paid, 'flexible' workforce has been massively increased along with unemployment, creating the horrifying figure of 16 million living on or below the poverty line, those in work, especially those in the most dynamic sectors of manufacturing have achieved wage increases bigger than in any International No 9 March/April 1987
Western country. These increases average about 18 per cent since 1979 compared with - 3.9 per cent in the US and + 11.7 per cent in Japan. So there is now a relatively well-paid sector in the most dynamic parts of British industry, in electronics, the computer industry and telecommunications. And while the assembly workers in these sectors are some of the most exploited in employed Britain, at the same time they employ some of the best paid workers. Such sectors are not yet attractive to international investment,
... Marxism Today opens the
door to an alternative capitalist consensus...' nor British investment for that matter, for they cannot compete in the labour market with South Korea or Hong Kong.
So far Thatcher's project has foundered on two counts. First, the absence of any sustained upturn in the world economy has resulted in a continued failure to attract substantial reinvestment. The City is just not interested. While speculation in the City knows no bounds, much manufacturing industry cannot offer large enough returns to attract capital. Investment is still 17 per cent lower than in 1970 and Britain is the only European country whose manufacturing output had declined in absolute terms in the last
five years. Second, despite the blows inflicted on the organised labour movement, particularly in the traditional industries, wage levels in the more dynamic sector have not been substantially driven down. Britain is still a long way from becoming a 'South Korean type economy.
But this does not meant that the policy is a failure; rather it suggests that a third term is a precondition for success. For other aspects of Thatcherism have seen some spectacular 'achievements'.
The government have seriously weakened the old, traditional bastions of the working class, those sections organised into the powerful unions which for so long seemed invincible — steel, engineering, ship building, and mining. They have forced through 'rationalisation' plans with massive job losses and the closing down of whole areas of industrial production. Despite courageous defensive struggles, these sectors have been unable to defeat the onslaught.
What we have in store with a re-elected Tory government, will be a similarly vicious attack, but this time on the workforce of the dynamic sectors. This is what is so significant about the VCU strike at British Telecom. If Thatcher is to succeed in the long term aim of making Britain a low wage economy, she will have to increase the level of exploitation of those workers in the developing, dynamic sectors. This is the task of her next term.
The other uncompleted task is the cutting back of public spending and the privatisation 9
of the welfare state. Rate capping, cuts in local services, in the health service, in education and in welfare provision, slowed down by working class resistance and the weight of public opinion. There has been widespread social opposition to the shutting down of hospital wards and to the undermining of education provision. Capitalism needs much bigger cuts to succeed in its necessary restructuring and a third term of Tory rule would undoubtedly see greater attacks on
In order to achieve this restructuring of the economy, the Tories have had to take on one of the most highly organised working classes
They have had to try the organisational and bargaining power of the trade union movement.
Thatcherism then is class war politics, a sustained ideological, political, economic attack on the working class and the oppressed, an attack aimed at reversing the balance of class forces, to stop and then reverse the decline of British industry, to create a low wage economy in order to attract back both national and international capital, to reindustrialise and make Britain competitive again in the world economy. Thatcher's own comments on the need to expell socialism from Britain, shows her understanding of the historic nature of what she has embarked
Not only is the future of working class organisation involved, but along with it a whole series of previously unquestioned civil liberties and rights. The increased use of MI5 against political opposition, the use of the police against trade unions, against people in the inner city and especially against the black communities, the attacks on freedom of speech against the BBC — all pose us with the question of the future of post-war social democracy in the event of another Tory government. The labour movement response The response of the leadership of the labour movement to this onslaught has been little short of pathetic. The capitulation of the leadership of the trade union movement to the anti-trade union laws, the refusal to provide any sort of leadership to those prepared to fight Thatcher, whether against the loss of jobs, greater rates of exploitation, defence of'
government or the welfare state, development of the 'lie down and die' realism has left militants and activists to fight on their own. The major exception to this craven display was of course the NUM leadership, and especially Scargill. But the defeat of the courageous miners led to a strengthening of the hold of the new realists in the trade unions and to the realignment to the right of the whole labour movement. Through this process the entire labour movement has been put on the defensive.
have seen since miners' strike have been of two sorts. First, there have been long defensive battles in some of the powerful unions, often about the very right of the trade union to exist, and with the employers sometimes aided
BRITISH POLITICS abetted by scab unions like the EETPU, as at
Secondly, there have been struggles in sectors which are newly militant. The strikes in the teachers' unions for over two years, and the short, sharp strike of the VCt in February this year — a union which had never before taken national strike action -provide examples of workers in the dynamic, new technology sector and a previously 'professional' sector using traditional working class methods to defend themselves.
What all these strikes have shown is that any successful prosecution of the struggle
'What we have in store is a
vicious attack on the
workforce of the dynamic
sectors' brings the workforce and the union into inevitable confrontation with the law. This has then been used by the leaderships to avoid fighting at all costs. Endless ballots, refusal to face sequestration of funds, refusal to spread the strike, a holding down of militancy, all have been used against the rank and file who are prepared to fight the Tories. The wholesale adoption of the slogan 'wait for a Labour government' has led to active opposition to the very idea of fighting back. When forced into strike action by the rank and file displaying a real rcadiness to fight, the leaderships have sold out at the first opportun-
Despite this crisis of leadership the readiness of sections of the labour movement to struggle has held back Thatcher's ability to deliver, making a third term a necessity to complete the offensive. The stakes in the general election are then very high. Yet Kinnock and the Labour leadership is incapable of capitalising on the Tories'
'millions of people in Britain
have illusions in the Labour
Party'
Although the result in Greenwich showed a large number of Tories voting tactically for the SDP, this will not be repeated on the same scale in a general election when the government is at stake.
What the polls also continue to reveal is the unpopularity of Tory policy. Time and again
against their policy are shown: against 'selling off the family silver', as the late Lord Stockton so aptly pur it; againsi lower personal taxation if it means less public ment; against cuts in welfare, the NHS, education; for withdrawal of British troops from the North of Ireland - a sentiment which none of the main parties represents!
But Labour seems unable to capitalise on this unpopularity. Vowhere was this so ob-
the recent attacks on the BBC programme Secret Society. Instead of criticising the undemocratic and way in which decisions are made on matters of defence, instead of attacking the use of the secret service to raid the offices of the BBC and Duncan Campbell's home, Kinnock upbraided Thatcher for being incompetent in not clamping down hard enough.
No wonder Labour cannot capitalise on Thatcher's unpopularity. With the Liberal/ SDP Alliance making gains by standing up for
Labour tries to assume the mantle of law and order, promising to outdo
This response, in the face of such high stakes, is hopeless. The Labour leadership's line of drop everything and wait for a Labour victory, while at the same time shifting all Labour's policies to the right to appeal to the middle ground has no future except defeat. First of all no section of the ruling class wants a Labour government, they think it is still far too unstable; secondly, the shift to the right on policy means Labour finds it hard to differentiate from the Alliance, while at the same time offering no real alternative to the Tories; thirdly, by refusing to support the struggles that do exist they undermine any confidence the working class have. The result will be as at Greenwich, a failure to build on minority, solid Labour votes and a large number of abstentions.
On defence, on the economy, on how to combat unemployment, on civil liberties and democratic rights, Labour has developed policies which appeal to no-one, neither to the labour movement nor bourgeois public opinion.
The same story on the economy and civil rights: Hattersley's plans on social ownership, a National Investment Bank; Labour's refusal to reverse Tory anti-trade union laws, racist immigration laws, their refusal to reverse cuts in welfare and social services — all result from the refusal to confront capital and the ruling class.
If Labour wins the election outright we can expect vicious anti-working class policies from the outset; if they go into a coalition with the Alliance, then an even higher price will have to be paid. For make no mistake about it, Kinnock may denounce any deal with Steel and Owen today, but the strategy of new realism makes it inevitable tomor-
The labour movement is faced with two choices. Either it accommodates to the capitalist, anti-working class consensus or it fights for an anti-capitalist alternative. The only way is for the left to develop such an alternative, for Kinnock won't do it. It is not enough to say, as do the British "!!:. 'we told you that Kinnock wouldn't bring socialism — join us'. Millions of people in Britain do have illusions in the Labour Party. The left therefore has a responsibility to respond to that both by developing real alternatives on poilcy, by opposing coalition and by organising a left across the whole of the Labour and trade union movement, a left which will have some answers to the crisis of leadership whatever the outcome of the